Analyses of God beliefs, atheism, religion, faith, miracles, evidence for religious claims, evil and God, arguments for and against God, atheism, agnosticism, the role of religion in society, and related issues.

The central idea is that in order for a person to accept some conclusion p on the basis of evidence E, then he or she needs to be confident that if p wasn't true, some indications of that could show up in E. What that means is that I shouldn't believe sources that indicate p is true unless there's a reasonable expectation that they would have informed me that p was false if that had been the case. Here's the principle:

Counter Evidence Principle (CEP): S would be reasonable in concluding that p is true on the basis of the evidence E only if it is reasonable for S to believe that the evidence E would indicate ~ p if ~p had been the case.

Many people who believe that Jesus existed and was divine believe that the Bible contains a reliable body of evidence that makes it reasonable to believe that Jesus was resurrected. There are 4 briefs accounts of the resurrection account in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

In a nutshell, what I argue is that when you consider the time between the alleged resurrection and the writing of the Gospels, and then the time between the writing to the oldest existing copies of those Gospels that we now have (about 200-300 years), it becomes obvious that those sources can’t be trusted to be telling us the whole story, if in fact there had been any available counter evidence to the resurrection. Suppose that Jesus was a fraud, or that the disciples faked the resurrection, or their enthusiasm led them to exaggerate, or Roman teenagers stole the body as a joke, or grave robbers got it, or the authors and transcribers over the next 300 years altered the story. Would we expect to find a record of that important counter evidence in the Bible that we have today? Is it reasonable to think that if Jesus had not been resurrected, and there was evidence that showed it, then that evidence would still be present in the Bible today for us to consider when making up our minds? Furthermore, is it reasonable to think that the people surrounding the alleged resurrection had the skills, the concepts, the methodology, and the objectivity to adequately investigate the alleged paranormal events?

The answers to these questions are all an obvious no. Hundreds or even thousands of invested, enthusiastic believers had ample opportunity and motive to make adjustments in the story to make it support the “Jesus is divine” conclusion. It would have been the norm for the uneducated, largely illiterate, superstitious people of the time to believe in all manner of omens, spiritual occurrences, ghosts, paranormal events, and miracles. No serious investigation by anyone without a vested interest in the events seems to have occurred or been recorded. Even if one had, they didn’t have the concepts or skills to get to the truth. Consider how many well-educated, smart people today are readily duped by religious charlatans performing easily debunked sleight of hand tricks. And we actually know that there was a great deal of trimming in the composition of the modern Bible to exclude those accounts of the resurrection and Jesus that did not satisfy later religious leaders. To make matters worse, the four Gospel accounts we have all tell very different stories about what happened. See my recent post:

One of the alternative Gospels, the Gospel According to Peter, was deliberately excluded from the cannon of New Testament books. The story it tells of the resurrection deviates even more, and raises more questions about what happened. There, the Jews get Pilate to put Roman guards at the tomb. The guards hear a voice and then see two men come down from the sky and then carry a body out of the tomb. Later, Mary and her friends find someone dressed in white in the tomb who claims that Jesus is gone.

I won’t defend a particular alternative version of the events; my point with the CEP principle is that the Biblical evidence is undermined so that we can’t draw reasonable conclusions about what really happened. But consider that if we include the Gospel of Peter account, then in four out of the five accounts, the tomb isn’t found empty; rather some one or two people (“angels”) are found inside. And in the Peter case, they are even seen removing the body! In John, Jesus is still in the tomb and talks to Mary. If we are really going to take the Biblical evidence seriously, then the obvious conclusion to draw is either that Jesus never left the tomb (suggesting that he was alive all along), or that the people (“angels”) that they found in the tomb took the body. If I walked into a tomb and saw that the body was missing and there were some dudes in there, the first and obvious question I’d ask is, “What did you guys do with the body?” Wouldn’t you? And you wouldn’t take them seriously for a moment if they said, “He magically came back from the dead, and then flew up into the sky to be with an a invisible being who has super powers.”

Long story short: If the Bible is our body of information about whether or not Jesus was resurrected, then we can’t trust it to be telling us the whole story. If there had been some important counter evidence that showed that Jesus was not resurrected, it would not have made it through the centuries to us. So we can’t form a reasonable conclusion about what really happened on the basis of what is probably a doctored, adjusted, tilted, fragmentary, and ill-formed body of evidence.

10 comments:

The part where you say "Were it not for the miracles of Jesus, Christians would not believe in god."

I doubt that because you would think that historically they would still believe in Jupiter/Zeus, or Odin, or some druid god.

Now, if not historically- and you are talking about today (2008) if they all of a sudden did not believe in the miracles of Jesus when they woke up tommorow, then your right there would be a much higher chance that they may not believe in god.

Wonderful post, Matt. I think the bible needs to be deconstucted in relation to the other texts out there that christians CHOSE not to include because it made their "literal" narrative less consistent.

Sadly for christians, as you point out, the bible is still incredibly inconsistent.

But, if atheists continue to point out the arbitrary and contradictory nature of christian texts, we may go a long way in making belief in christianity highly problematic, and embarrassing.

Sorry to comment on such an old post, but I think your Counter-Evidence Principle is overstated. To reiterate how you phrased it:

S would be reasonable in concluding that p is true on the basis of the evidence E only if it is reasonable for S to believe that the evidence E would indicate ~ p if ~p had been the case.

And here is how I would phrase it:

S would be reasonable in concluding that p is true on the basis of the evidence E only if it is reasonable for S to believe that the evidence E would not have been possible if ~p had been the case.

In other words, it is not necessary that a change in the evidence would have proved -- or even indicated -- ~p.

Perhaps I can phrase what I am saying more clearly in logical notation... It is only reasonable to conclude that E->p if ~p->F, where ~(E ^ F) (which is just a fancy way of writing (E->p) -> (~p->~E), eh?)

For instance, I might believe that my friend owns a Ferrari because I saw him driving it. That is reasonable under my more weakly-stated CEP, because if he did not own a Ferrari, I most definitely would not see him driving it. However, that belief fails your too-strong CEP, because if in reality he did not own a Ferrari, the fact that I didn't see him driving it would not prove anything. The evidence E (whether or not I saw him driving it) would not at all indicate ~p (that he doesn't own a Ferrari). Perhaps he owns it but I just haven't seen it yet.

Not that this impacts the rest of the post/paper, but I think your CEP, as stated, is a logical fallacy.

James, thanks for thinking about this principle and working up the counter example. It's a very interesting case you give. First, it's surely not a logical fallacy, although the principle may be stricter than our ordinary, intuitively acceptable cases of justification. I'd be happy to raise the bar on our ordinary practices. But to the point: I think you're construing evidence too narrowly here. Your evidence that your friend owns a Ferrari, or doesn't, is not confined to just whether you saw him driving it or not. It also includes a whole host of information you have about the relative rarity of Ferraris, your friend's income, your friends other cars, and so on. Your have a great deal of evidence that I do not drive a Ferrari, for example. Perhaps you know that I am a college professor, and you know they are rare, and some professor writing a blog about atheism just doesn't fit the demographic. So if we construe evidence more broadly, it is the case that you're justified in believing that I don't own one. And not just because you haven't seen me driving one.

Nevertheless, I don't think either my principle or yours will really withstand any hardcore Chisolming, or Gettier style analysis in the end. I'm ok with having a rough and ready principle that makes the vital point about the importance of counter evidence and a search that would have revealed some if it was there. Also, the Jesus claims are special and the principles that should be applied to them won't be the same as the standards that justify us for ordinary, daily belief formation about trivial, real time matters.

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Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Rochester. Teaching at CSUS since 1996. My main area of research and publication now is atheism and philosophy of religion. I am also interested in philosophy of mind, epistemology, and rational decision theory/critical thinking.

Quotes:

"Science. It works, bitches."

"The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully." - Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

"Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told. Think about it. Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry for ever and ever until the end of time. But he loves you! He loves you and he needs money!"George Carlin 1937 - 2008

Many Paths, No God.

I don't go to church, I AM a church, for fuck's sake. I'm MINISTRY. --Al Jourgensen

Every sect, as far as reason will help them, make use of it gladly; and where it fails them, they cry out, “It is a matter of faith, and above reason.”- John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

If life evolved, then there isn't anything left for God to do.

The universe is not fine-tuned for humanity. Humanity is fine-tuned to the universe. Victor Stenger

Skeptical theists choose to ride the trolley car of skepticism concerning the goods that God would know so as to undercut the evidential argument from evil. But once on that trolley car it may not be easy to prevent that skepticism from also undercutting any reasons they may suppose they have for thinking that God will provide them and the worshipful faithful with life everlasting in his presence. William Rowe

Unless you're one of those Easter-bunny vitalists who believes that personality results from some unquantifiable divine spark, there's really no alternative to the mechanistic view of human nature. Peter Watts

The essence of humanity's spiritual dilemma is that we evolved genetically to accept one truth and discovered another. E.O. Wilson

Creating humans who could understand the contrast between good and evil without subjecting them to eons of horrible suffering would be an utterly inconsequential matter for an omnipotent being. MM

The second commandment is "Thou shall not construct any graven images." Is this really the pinnacle of what we can achieve morally? The second most important moral principle for all the generations of humanity? It would be so easy to improve upon the 10 Commandments. How about "Try not to deep fry all of your food"? Sam Harris

Religion comes from the period of human prehistory where nobody--not even the mighty Democritus who concluded that all matter was made from atoms--had the smallest idea what was going on. It comes from the bawling and fearful infancy of our species, and is a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for knowledge (as well as comfort, reassurance, and other infantile needs). Today the least educated of my children knows much more about the natural order than any of the founders of religion, and one would think--though the connection is not a fully demonstrable one--that this is why they seem so uninterested in sending fellow humans to hell.Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great

We believe with certainty that an ethical life can be lived without religion. And we know for a fact that the corollary holds true--that religion has caused innumerable people not just to conduct themselves no better than others, but to award themselves permission to behave in ways that would make a brothel-keeper or an ethnic cleanser raise an eyebrow. Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great

If atheism is a religion, then not playing chess is a hobby.

"Imagine a world in which generations of human beings come to believe that certain films were made by God or that specific software was coded by him. Imagine a future in which millions of our descendants murder each other over rival interpretations of Star Wars or Windows 98. Could anything--anything--be more ridiculous? And yet, this would be no more ridiculous than the world we are living in." Sam Harris, The End of Faith, 36.

"Only a tiny fraction of corpsesfossilize, and we are lucky to have as many intermediate fossils as we do. We could easily have had no fossils at all, and still the evidence for evolution from other sources, such as molecular genetics and geographical distribution, would be overwhelmingly strong. On the other hand, evolution makes the strong prediction that if a single fossil turned up in the wrong geological stratum, the theory would be blown out of the water." Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, p. 127.

One cannot take, "believing in X gives me hope, makes me moral, or gives me comfort," to be a reason for believing X. It might make me moral if I believe that I will be shot the moment I do something immoral, but that doesn't make it possible for me to believe it, or to take its effects on me as reasons for thinking it is true. Matt McCormick

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Top Ten Myths about Belief in God

1. Myth: Without God, life has no meaning.

There are 1.2 billion Chinese who have no predominant religion, and 1 billion people in India who are predominantly Hindu. And 65% of Japan's 127 million people claim to be non-believers. It is laughable to suggest that none of these billions of people are leading meaningful lives.

2. Myth: Prayer works.

Numerous studies have now shown that remote, blind, inter-cessionary prayer has no effect whatsoever of the health or well-being of subject's health, psychological states, or longevity. Furthermore, we have no evidence to support the view that people who wish fervently in their heads for things that they want get those things at any higher rate than people who do not.

3. Myth: Atheists are less decent, less moral, and overall worse people than believers.

There are hundreds of millions of non-believers on the planet living normal, decent, moral lives. They love their children, care about others, obey laws, and try to keep from doing harm to others just like everyone else. In fact, in predominately non-believing countries such as in northern Europe, measures of societal health such as life expectancy at birth, adult literacy, per capita income, education, homicide, suicide, gender equality, and political coercion are better than they are in believing societies.

4. Myth: Belief in God is compatible with the descriptions, explanations and products of science.

In the past, every supernatural or paranormal explanation of phenomena that humans believed turned out to be mistaken; science has always found a physical explanation that revealed that the supernatural view was a myth. Modern organisms evolved from lower life forms, they weren't created 6,000 years ago in the finished state. Fever is not caused by demon possession. Bad weather is not the wrath of angry gods. Miracle claims have turned out to be mistakes, frauds, or deceptions. So we have every reason to conclude that science will continue to undermine the superstitious worldview of religion.

5. Myth: We have immortal souls that survive the death of the body.

We have mountains of evidence that makes it clear that our consciousness, our beliefs, our desires, our thoughts all depend upon the proper functioning of our brains our nervous systems to exist. So when the brain dies, all of these things that we identify with the soul also cease to exist. Despite the fact that billions of people have lived and died on this planet, we do not have a single credible case of someone's soul, or consciousness, or personality continuing to exist despite the demise of their bodies. Allegations of spirit chandlers, psychics, ghost stories, and communications with the dead have all turned out to be frauds, deceptions, mistakes, and lies.

6. Myth: If there is no God, everything is permitted. Only belief in God makes people moral.

Consider the billions of people in China, India, and Japan above. If this claim was true, none of them would be decent moral people. So Ghandi, the Buddha, and Confucius, to name only a few were not moral people on this view, not to mention these other famous atheists: Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, Aldous Huxley, Charles Darwin, Benjamin Franklin, Carl Sagan, Bertrand Russell, Elizabeth Cady-Stanton, John Stuart Mill, Galileo, George Bernard Shaw, Gloria Steinam, James Madison, John Adams, and so on.

7. Myth: Believing in God is never a root cause of significant evil.

The counter examples of cases where it was someone's belief in God that was the direct justification for their perpetrated horrendous evils on humankind are too numerous to mention.

8. Myth: The existence of God would explain the origins of the universe and humanity.

All of the questions that allegedly plague non-God attempts to explain our origins--why are we here, where are we going, what is the point of it all, why is the universe here--still apply to the faux explanation of God. The suggestion that God created everything does not make it any clearer to us where it all came from, how he created it, why he created it, where it isall going. In fact, it raises even more difficult mysteries: how did God, operating outside the confines of space, time, and natural law "create" or "build" a universe that has physical laws? We have no precedent and maybe no hope of answering or understanding such a possibility. What does it mean to say that some disembodied, spiritual being who knows everything and has all power, "loves" us, or has thoughts, or goals, or plans? How could such a being have any sort of personal relationship with beings like us?

9. Myth: Even if it isn't true, there's no harm in my believing in God anyway.

People's religious views inform their voting, how they raise their children, what they think is moral and immoral, what laws and legislation they pass, who they are friends and enemies with, what companies they invest in, where they donate to charities, who they approve and disapprove of, who they are willing to kill or tolerate, what crimes they are willing to commit, and which wars they are willing to fight. How could any reasonable person think that religious beliefs are insignificant.

10: Myth: There is a God.

Common Criticisms of Atheism (and Why They’re Mistaken)

1. You can’t prove atheism.You can never prove a negative, so atheism requires as much faith as religion.

Atheists are frequently accosted with this accusation, suggesting that in order for non-belief to be reasonable, it must be founded on deductively certain grounds. Many atheists within the deductive atheology tradition have presented just those sorts of arguments, but those arguments are often ignored. But more importantly, the critic has invoked a standard of justification that almost none of our beliefs meet. If we demand that beliefs are not justified unless we have deductive proof, then all of us will have to throw out the vast majority of things we currently believe—oxygen exists, the Earth orbits the Sun, viruses cause disease, the 2008 summer Olympics were in China, and so on. The believer has invoked one set of abnormally stringent standards for the atheist while helping himself to countless beliefs of his own that cannot satisfy those standards. Deductive certainty is not required to draw a reasonable conclusion that a claim is true.

As for requiring faith, is the objection that no matter what, all positions require faith?Would that imply that one is free to just adopt any view they like?Religiousness and non-belief are on the same footing?(they aren’t).If so, then the believer can hardly criticize the non-believer for not believing. Is the objection that one should never believe anything on the basis of faith?Faith is a bad thing?That would be a surprising position for the believer to take, and, ironically, the atheist is in complete agreement.

2. The evidence shows that we should believe.

If in fact there is sufficient evidence to indicate that God exists, then a reasonable person should believe it. Surprisingly, very few people pursue this line as a criticism of atheism. But recently, modern versions of the design and cosmological arguments have been presented by believers that require serious consideration. Many atheists cite a range of reasons why they do not believe that these arguments are successful. If an atheist has reflected carefully on the best evidence presented for God’s existence and finds that evidence insufficient, then it’s implausible to fault them for irrationality, epistemic irresponsibility, or for being obviously mistaken.Given that atheists are so widely criticized, and that religious belief is so common and encouraged uncritically, the chances are good that any given atheist has reflected more carefully about the evidence.

3. You should have faith.

Appeals to faith also should not be construed as having prescriptive force the way appeals to evidence or arguments do. The general view is that when a person grasps that an argument is sound, that imposes an epistemic obligation of sorts on her to accept the conclusion. One person’s faith that God exists does not have this sort of inter-subjective implication. Failing to believe what is clearly supported by the evidence is ordinarily irrational. Failure to have faith that some claim is true is not similarly culpable. At the very least, having faith, where that means believing despite a lack of evidence or despite contrary evidence is highly suspect. Having faith is the questionable practice, not failing to have it.

4. Atheism is bleak, nihilistic, amoral, dehumanizing, or depressing.

These accusations have been dealt with countless times. But let’s suppose that they are correct. Would they be reasons to reject the truth of atheism? They might be unpleasant affects, but having negative emotions about a claim doesn’t provide us with any evidence that it is false. Imagine upon hearing news about the Americans dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki someone steadfastly refused to believe it because it was bleak, nihilistic, amoral, dehumanizing, or depressing. Suppose we refused to believe that there is an AIDS epidemic that is killing hundreds of thousands of people in Africa on the same grounds.

5.Atheism is bad for you.Some studies in recent years have suggested that people who regularly attend church, pray, and participate in religious activities are happier, live longer, have better health, and less depression.

First, these results and the methodologies that produced them have been thoroughly criticized by experts in the field.Second, it would be foolish to conclude that even if these claims about quality of life were true, that somehow shows that there is theism is correct and atheism is mistaken.What would follow, perhaps, is that participating in social events like those in religious practices are good for you, nothing more.There are a number of obvious natural explanations.Third, it is difficult to know the direction of the causal arrow in these cases.Does being religious result in these positive effects, or are people who are happier, healthier, and not depressed more inclined to participate in religions for some other reasons?Fourth, in a number of studies atheistic societies like those in northern Europe scored higher on a wide range of society health measures than religious societies.

Given that atheists make up a tiny proportion of the world’s population, and that religious governments and ideals have held sway globally for thousands of years, believers will certainly lose in a contest over “who has done more harm,” or “which ideology has caused more human suffering.”It has not been atheism because atheists have been widely persecuted, tortured, and killed for centuries nearly to the point of extinction.

Sam Harris has argued that the problem with these regimes has been that they became too much like religions.“Such regimes are dogmatic to the core and generally give rise to personality cults that are indistinguishable from cults of religious hero worship. Auschwitz, the gulag, and the killing fields were not examples of what happens when human beings reject religious dogma; they are examples of political, racial and nationalistic dogma run amok. There is no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too reasonable.”

7.Atheists are harsh, intolerant, and hateful of religion.

Sam Harris has advocated something he calls “conversational intolerance.”For too long, a confusion about religious tolerance has led people to look the other way and say nothing while people with dangerous religious agendas have undermined science, the public good, and the progress of the human race.There is no doubt that people are entitled to read what they choose, write and speak freely, and pursue the religions of their choice.But that entitlement does not guarantee that the rest of us must remain silent or not verbally criticize or object to their ideas and their practices, especially when they affect all of us.Religious beliefs have a direct affect on who a person votes for, what wars they fight, who they elect to the school board, what laws they pass, who they drop bombs on, what research they fund (and don’t), which social programs they fund (and don’t), and a long list of other vital, public matters.Atheists are under no obligation to remain silent about those beliefs and practices that urgently need to be brought into the light and reasonably evaluated.

Real respect for humanity will not be found by indulging your neighbor’s foolishness, or overlooking dangerous mistakes.Real respect is found in disagreement.The most important thing we can do for each other is disagree vigorously and thoughtfully so that we can all get closer to the truth.

8.Science is as much a religious ideology as religion is.

At their cores, religions and science have a profound difference.The essence of religion is sustaining belief in the face of doubts, obeying authority, and conforming to a fixed set of doctrines.By contrast, the most important discovery that humans have ever made is the scientific method.The essence of that method is diametrically opposed to religious ideals:actively seek out disconfirming evidence.The cardinal virtues of the scientific approach are to doubt, analyze, critique, be skeptical, and always be prepared to draw a different conclusion if the evidence demands it.